BlackBerry 10 L-Series photos leak ahead of January reveal

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RIM’s big reveal for the BlackBerry 10 operating system and the all-touch L-Series and QWERTY N-Series phones won’t take place until next month, but an enthusiastic fan in Vietnam has decided to give everyone an early look at what to expect. Over on the popular Vietnamese social networking site, the touchscreen L-Series BlackBerry has been photographed from every angle — and these are no quickly-snapped, out-of-focus images. They’re crisp and clear and leave little to the imagination. There’s even a video as you can see above.

The L-Series design is an evolution of the PlayBook-inspired look of the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha devices. It’s sleek and stealthy looking, with a removable back plate that appears to have the same kind of soft-touch texturing as the Nexus 7. Besides offering something comfortable to grip, the plate also allows access to a user-removable battery. In the leaked photos, it’s an 1800mAh power pack — not quite on par with top-shelf Android phones, but a massive 50% increase over current-gen BlackBerry devices like the Bold 9900. As you’d expect, the microSD expansion slot and SIM card slot are also hidden beneath the back cover.

Around the sides of the leaked L-Series you’ll find physical buttons (volume control and power), a micro USB port for charging and data transfer, and an HDMI output. A front-facing camera is also visible, so BlackBerry 10 smartphone users will finally be able to use their handsets to take selfpics while looking at the display, make video calls to their contacts (definitely to their BlackBerry-toting ones, and possibly to Skype users if previous rumors pan out), and check for food in their teeth.

These leaked images are generating plenty of buzz amongst the BlackBerry faithful. Whether or not the new hardware and BlackBerry 10 OS will spark RIM’s turnaround remains to be seen, but you can almost hear The Final Countdown playing softly in Waterloo if you listen very closely.